American Aquarium Song Tournament Challenge

Roughly a week ago, we announced that our next Artist Song Tournament would feature the discography of American Aquarium. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking those 68 songs that make up the six full-length studio albums and one extended play and dissecting them to the best of our ability until we find the best American Aquarium song.

Over that period, there will be 63 individual song match-ups that happen within the four regions–I) Pearl Snap Poets, II) Back Row Baptists, III) Bette Davis Doubles, and IV) Jean Jacket Hipsters–on our American Aquarium Song Tournament Bracket. If you’re familiar with AA, then you’ll probably recognize just where those specific region names come from.

For those of you not familiar with our Artist Song Tournaments, here’s what you need to know. Essentially, we take an artist/band’s song catalog and rank the songs by popularity. Songs deemed more popular, the higher the seed. Then, we’ll take each individual match-up and have it voted on by you, the fan. As a fan, we want you to vote for the song that you deem as the better.

With every match-up, we’ll have various writers, musicians, and the like comment on the match-up and why they feel that the better song moved on (or in some instances, didn’t move on).

We’re also giving the opportunity for you, the reader, to fill out your own personal bracket. Much like in March when everyone is filling out their NCAA basketball brackets, you too can fill out your own American Aquarium Song Tournament bracket. Whoever fills out the most accurate bracket will win a bundle of American Aquarium merchandise.

To be eligible for our American Aquarium Song Tournament:

1) You must have your bracket submitted to newslangsongtournament@gmail.com no later than 12:01 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 02.UPDATE: We’ve extended the sign-up deadline to Monday, August 03 at midnight.2) You must be 18 or older. 3) You must only submit one bracket.4) You must live in the continental United States.

The easiest way for you to fill out your bracket will be one of the following ways:

1) Open the bracket in Photoshop (or any similar software) and write in your picks for each round. 2) Printing the bracket and filling it out by hand and scanning your bracket.3) If either of those don’t work, as a last resort, write/type it out by hand.

Note: You can fill out the master bracket above or each of the four individual close-ups below. If you fill out the four below, be sure to mark winners of your Final Four and Championship.

NOTE WHEN FILLNG OUT: Each region has 17 seeds rather than your typical 16 to fit every American Aquarium song recorded and released on Wolves, Burn. Flicker. Die., Small Town Hymns, Dances For the Lonely, Bones, The Bible & The Bottle, and Antique Hearts. To fit on the actual bracket, we shortened each song name of the 16 and 17 seeds. You should also pick the winner of these individual match-ups.